Bright Star

Bright Star (film)

Directed by Jane Campion
Produced by Jan Chapman
Caroline Hewitt
Written by Jane Campion
Starring Ben Whishaw
Abbie Cornish
Paul Schneider
Kerry Fox
Thomas Sangster
Cinematography Greig Fraser
Editing by Alexandre de Franceschi
Distributed by Apparition (USA)
Pathé Distribution
Release date(s) 15 May 2009 (Cannes)
18 September 2009 (US)
6 November 2009 (UK)
Running time 119 minutes
Country Australia
United Kingdom
Language English
Budget $8,500,000
Gross revenue $12,824,055

Bright Star is a 2009 film based on the last three years of the life of poet John Keats, and in particular his romantic relationship with Fanny Brawne. It stars Ben Whishaw as Keats and Abbie Cornish as Fanny. A British/Australian/French co-production, it was directed by Jane Campion, who wrote the screenplay and was inspired by the biography of Keats by Andrew Motion, who served as a script consultant on the film. The film competed in the main competition at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, and was first shown to the public on 15 May 2009. The film's title is a reference to a sonnet by Keats named "Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art", which he wrote while he was with Brawne.

Several other poems are recited in the film, including "The Eve of St Agnes" and "Ode to a Nightingale". Both Campion and Ben Whishaw completed extensive research in preparation for the film. Many of the lines in the script are taken directly from Keats's letters, which are as well known as his poems. Whishaw as well, learned how to write with a quill and ink during filming. The letters that Fanny Brawn receives from Keats in the film were actually written by Whishaw in his own hand.

Contents
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production
4 Awards
4.1 Won
4.2 Nominations
5 Soundtrack
5.1 Track listing
6 Book of Love Letters and Poems
6.1 Letters From John Keats To Fanny Brawne
6.2 Poems
6.3 Illustrations
7 References
8 External links

Plot
“A Man in love I do think cuts the sorryest figure in the world,” wrote the English poet John Keats in 1819 at the time of his love affair with Fanny Brawne. Born in 1795, he was 24; Brawne was 19 at the time. Based on the biography of Keats by Andrew Motion, New Zealand-born director Jane Campion’s Bright Star tells the story of their brief but intense relationship. As Campion’s film opens, it is the year 1818 in Hampstead, then north of London. Keats (Ben Whishaw) has recently returned from a walking tour of Scotland with his friend and fellow poet Charles Brown (Paul Schneider), who is a neighbor to the Brawne family.

The widowed Mrs. Brawne (Kerry Fox) has three children—18-year-old Fanny (Abbie Cornish), son Sam, 14 (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), and daughter Toots, 9 (Edie Martin).

For Keats, it is a time of considerable financial difficulty. Brown is keeping him afloat, affirming that “Your writing is the finest thing in my life.” While Keats is drawn to Fanny (“beautiful and elegant, graceful, silly fashionable and strange”), Brown has the opposite reaction. He disparages “the well-stitched Miss Brawne,” accusing her of making “a religion out of flirting.”

Brown resents Fanny’s incursion, partly out of jealousy, but primarily because he thinks his friend’s artistic soul is at risk, that the girl impedes Keats from making his mind “available for inspiration.” In fact, Keats is gaining new artistic strength. He pens such exquisite works as Ode to a Nightingale and Ode to Melancholy. The loss of his brother to tuberculosis and the premonition of his own death mature his powers—“How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world impress a sense of its natural beauties.”

At the time Keats meets Fanny, his Endymion has just been published (with its famous opening lines, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:/Its loveliness increases; it will never/Pass into nothingness; but still will keep/A bower quiet for us, and a sleep/Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing”). The poem is met with several scathing reviews. But Fanny feels otherwise. In order to impress the writer, she launches herself into Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare—Keats’s literary idols—or at least pretends to.

Keats labors incessantly in his quarters at Hampstead in the winter of 1819, completing poems such as The Eve of St. Agnes and the ambitious Hyperion. In addition to these lengthier, more involved works, Keats writes his lovely sonnet to Fanny, Bright Star:

“Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors— No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever—or else swoon to death.”

In one scene, Fanny and Keats read aloud from the iconic La Belle Dame Sans Merci. In the spring of 1819, Brown rents half of his house to the Brawnes. Only a thin wall now separates Keats and Fanny. But there are more pressing social and physical obstacles.

Keats’s stolen moments with Fanny are frowned upon not only by Brown, but by Mrs. Brawne as well. No bright stars seem to grace his poverty-stricken horizon. In one moment of frustration, Fanny lashes out at her mother: “You taught me to love not only the rich.” Illness strikes. Rather than cooling the romance, the task of nursing Keats deepens Fanny’s love and enlarges her emotionally.

Keats wrote Fanny that he felt she cared for him “for my own sake,” as opposed to those women “whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel.” (To Brown he writes: “I should have had her when I was in health, and I should have remained well.”) He tells Fanny how horrid is “the chance of slipping into the ground instead of into your arms.” At death’s door, Keats is dispatched by his friends to Italy, because of its climate. The change comes too late. The poet expires tragically in February 1821 in Rome at the age of 25. “Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” is the inscription he chose for his tombstone.

Cast
Ben Whishaw as John Keats
Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne
Paul Schneider as Charles Armitage Brown, Keats's best friend
Kerry Fox as Fanny's mother
Thomas Sangster as Samuel Brawne, Fanny's brother
Edie Martin as Margaret "Toots" Brawne, Fanny's sister
Jonathan Aris as Leigh Hunt
Samuel Barnett as Joseph Severn
Claudie Blakley as Mrs Dilke
Antonia Campbell-Hughes as Abigail O'Donaghue Brown, housemaid and mother of Charles Brown's child
Production
Janet Patterson, who has worked with Campion for over 20 years, rather uncommonly served as both costume designer and production designer for the film.

Some filming also took place at Elstree Studios.

The Hyde House and Estate in Hyde, Bedfordshire substituted for the Keats House in Hampstead. Campion decided that the Keats House (also known as Wentworth Place) was too small and "a little bit fusty".

Awards
Won
British Independent Film Awards, Best Technical Achievement (for cinematography)
Heartland Film Festival, Truly Moving Sound Award
National Society of Film Critics, Best Supporting Actor
Nominations
82nd Academy Awards, Best Achievement in Costume Design
British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Best Costume Design
British Independent Film Awards, Best Actress
British Independent Film Awards, Best Director
British Independent Film Awards, Best Supporting Actress
Critics Choice Award, Best Costume Design
Cannes Film Festival, Golden Palm
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, Best Actress
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, Best Cinematography
Chlotrudis Awards, Best Actress
London Critics Circle Film Awards, Actress of the Year
London Critics Circle Film Awards, British Film of the Year
Satellite Awards, Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama
Satellite Awards, Best Director
Satellite Awards, Best Motion Picture, Drama
Satellite Awards, Best Screenplay, Original
Soundtrack
Lakeshore Records released the soundtrack for Bright Star digitally (iTunes and Amazon Digital) on 15 September 2009 and in stores on 13 October 2009. The film's soundtrack features original music by Mark Bradshaw with dialogue from the film voiced by Cornish and Whishaw.

Track listing
1."Negative Capability" – 3:55
2."La Belle Dame Sans Merci" – 2:28
3."Return" – 0:58
4."Human Orchestra" – 1:48
5."Convulsion" – 0:52
6."Bright Star" – 1:49
7."Letters" – 3:49
8."Yearning" – 2:24
9."Ode to a Nightingale" – 5:24
Book of Love Letters and Poems
A collection of Keats's love letters and selected poems, titled Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne, was published in 2009 as a companion to the motion picture. The 144 page book was published by Penguin and includes an introduction written by Campion.
The content of the book is as follows:

Letters From John Keats To Fanny Brawne
I-IX: Shanklin, Winchester, Westminister
X-XXXII: Wentworth Place
XXXIII-XXXVII: Kentish Town - Preparing For Italy
Poems
'Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art'
The Eve of St Agnes
A Dream, after reading Dante's Episode of Paola and Francesca
La Belle Dame sans Merci. A Ballad
Ode to Psyche
Ode on Melancholy
Ode on Indolence
Lamia
'The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!'
What can I do to drive away
'I cry your mercy, pity, love - ay, love!'
To Fanny
'This living hand, now warm and capable'
Illustrations
Sketch of John Keats sleeping (28 January 1821) by Joseph Severn
Silhouette of Fanny Brawne, after Augustin Edouart
Facsimilies of Keats's handwriting, from his letters to Fanny
References
1.^ Michael Phillips, "Talking Pictures" on chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 9 November 2009.
2.^ movies.yahoo.com. Retrieved 9 November 2009.
3.^ "Festival de Cannes: Bright Star". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/10897442/year/2009.html. Retrieved 2009-05-09.
4.^ a b c d Archie Thomas (2008-04-02). "Schneider, Fox join 'Bright Star'". Variety. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983328.html?categoryid=28&cs=1. Retrieved 2008-05-13.
5.^ McElheny, Meghan. "Five minutes with Bright Star costume designer Janet Patterson: Editors' Blog". Wmagazine.com. http://www.wmagazine.com/w/blogs/editorsblog/2010/01/19/five-minutes-with-bright-star.html. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
6.^ "Elstree Studios - Film and TV Search Bright Star". Elstreefilmstudios.co.uk. http://www.elstreefilmstudios.co.uk/film_tv_search.aspx?searchsectorm=f_title&id=b&fid=571&searchtextm=Bright%20Star. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
7.^ Anita Singh (2009-05-15). "Cannes 2009: film charts John Keats' romance with Fanny Brawne - in Luton". The Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/cannes-film-festival/5330240/Cannes-2009-film-charts-John-Keats-romance-with-Fanny-Brawne---in-Luton.html. Retrieved 2009-05-15.
8.^ "Bright Star Soundtrack". Fanbolt.Com. http://www.fanbolt.com/featured-album.php?id=16. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
9.^ "Bright Star Soundtrack CD". Cduniverse.com. http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7992624. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
10.^ "Bright Star - John Keats - Penguin Group (USA)". Us.penguingroup.com. 2009-09-16. http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780143117742,00.html?Bright_Star_John_Keats. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
External links
Official website
Bright Star at the Internet Movie Database
Bright Star at Rotten Tomatoes
A chapter about John Keats, Fanny Brawne, and the poem "Bright Star" from Keats, the biography by Andrew Motion that inspired the film.
v • d • eFilms directed by Jane Campion

1980s A Girl's Own Story (1984) · Two Friends (1986) · Sweetie (1989)
990s An Angel at My Table (1990) · The Piano (1993) · The Portrait of a Lady (1996) · Holy Smoke! (1999)
2000s In the Cut (2003) · Bright Star (2009)
Short films The Lady Bug (2007)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_Star_(film)"
Categories: English-language films | 2009 films | 2000s drama films | Biographical films | Films directed by Jane Campion | Films set in England Romantic drama films | Films shot in Rome
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